


things half in shadow (and halfway in light)

by Bonnie_Bug



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Psychics/Psionics, Episode: s04e03 The Final Problem, Fix-It, Gen, I don't normally go for "it was all just a dream" theories but it works in this case, I swear I started this fic when it was actually relevant, John Is In A Coma, M/M, Psychic Abilities, Psychic Sherlock, it was all just a dream, mixed with
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-08
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-02-12 02:11:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12949065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bonnie_Bug/pseuds/Bonnie_Bug
Summary: "Wind's in the East, mist movin' inLike something is brewin', and 'bout to begin..."John has been trapped inside his own head for four days, nine hours, and twelve minutes. Only he knows what horrors he's facing.Sherlock is going to bring him back. No matter what.





	1. can't put my finger on what lies in store

**Author's Note:**

> **edit:** I posted this at like 3 am and I Completely forgot to thank my friend prix!!!!
> 
> they’ve been So patient and wonderful these past like ten months listening to me blather about this story ~~and star trek despite the fact they’ve never watched it skdkdk~~ and helping me out of sticky spots when I wasn’t sure how to go on and being the best sounding board anyone could ask for for this story and like two dozen more unrelated headcanons of mine skdkdk 
> 
> SO YEAH thank you so much prix ilu!!! *like ten sparkle heart emojis*
> 
> /edit
> 
>  
> 
> so this actually takes place in a universe I've been thinking about since before s4 even aired but I haven't. actually written anything for it :v 
> 
> SO that being said here's some stuff you need to know about this verse that would've been explained in one of the earlier stories that don't exist and that I wasn't able to easily explain in this story:
> 
> psychic (or psychedivergent) people make up about 8-9% of the population
> 
> normal people are called psychetypical 
> 
> psychics are "out" in the world but your average person might not know much about them beyond the very basics
> 
> sherlock (and most other telepaths) can enter a person's mindscape, regardless if they're psychetypical or not. a mindscape is the interior of someone's mind, a representation of their thoughts and dreams and personality, and with practice psychics and even psychetypicals can learn to alter their mindscape. basically it's like sherlock's mind palace but psychic 
> 
> sometime before trf, sherlock outed himself as psychic to john and helped him strengthen his natural mental shields after john's memory was tampered with bc of a case. he also taught john how to alter and change his mindscape to create his own proto mind flat. both of them felt very comfortable and at home in each other's mind (which had never happened before for sherlock) but they didn't ever really admit it at all to each other bc they're dumb pining idiots 
> 
>  
> 
> that should be everything!! if anything else comes up that I'm not able to easily explain I'll edit the notes here, but until then please enjoy!! :D

It had been a week since they'd seen each other last.

A _week._

Things had still been a bit awkward between them, what with the detox and residual anger issues to work through, and before that they hadn't so much as spoken to each other for over a month, so it wasn't unexpected. They actually texted each other semi-regularly now, and made the effort to meet up for lunch once or twice a week, which was more than Sherlock had ever hoped for going into it, so. Things were better. A bit awkward, but better.

And now John was in hospital, a gunshot wound grazing his left temple, and in the depths of an inexplicable coma.

Sherlock sighed, shifting on the easy-clean vinyl of the visitor’s chair, and watched as the monitor quietly traced John’s pulse in jagged spikes.

Just over three days ago, he had been idly texting John, passing the time in between stages of his current experiment. Eventually, John had said he needed to leave for an appointment with his therapist, and Sherlock had sarcastically wished him luck. They made plans to meet up for some Chinese after John was done -- it had been a week since they'd last seen each other, after all.

Forty-seven minutes later, he'd gotten the call from Mycroft that John was en route to St. Bart’s, bleeding severely from a head wound and unconscious. Seventeen minutes after that, he was in the waiting room, berating every nurse he could find, demanding information. Two hours and five minutes after that, he was sitting in John’s recovery room, waiting for him to wake up.

He was still waiting, three days later.

They’d moved John out of the recovery room when he still hadn't woken up an hour later into another room on the same floor (a private one -- Mycroft’s influence, no doubt, done more for the nurses’ benefit than for Sherlock’s. A private room meant a reduced chance for him to annoy and insult them, after all). When, two hours and twenty-seven minutes later, it became apparent his failure to wake up wasn't just an unusual reaction to the anesthetic, they'd whisked him away for a multitude of tests and scans.

Eleven hours, forty-nine minutes, and thirty-seven seconds after he was first admitted, John was moved to the coma ward.

They still had no diagnosis.

The doctors were baffled. According to every scan and test they could perform, John’s brain was perfectly fine. The gunshot was merely a graze, hardly scraping his skull. It had bled profusely, and he'd have a nasty scar when it was healed, but there would be no real lasting damage.

Moreover, his brain wasn't acting like a normal coma patient’s. He would react to physical stimulus, his eyes would shift, his brain lit up all over in the MRI.

It was like he was just… dreaming.

Once they had exhausted every route medical science allowed them, they'd turned to the psychic sciences. Several telepaths had come in, but their diagnoses were just the same. For all intents and purposes, he was merely sleeping like normal. He just… wasn't waking up.

Sherlock could’ve told them that. It had been over three years, but he still knew what John's sleeping mind felt like.

He skimmed over John’s mind now, feeling around the edges for any inconsistencies. He'd gotten into the habit of reaching out to John’s mind these last few days, memorizing the feel of him slumbering and searching for any sign that he might wake up soon. For the three days that he’d been doing it, there hadn't been any change. Today was no different.

He sighed again, slouching down in the vinyl chair with a squeak, and shut his eyes. He lowered his mental shields, letting his mind drift up and out, tethered by a thin strand to his body. He loosened the second shields around his empathy as well -- normally he kept them even tighter than his telepathy-based shields, finding the emotional chatter even more distracting and annoying than the mental kind but it had been three days at John’s bedside, and he was _bored_.

He wasn't going to leave, but he was bored all the same.

However, it wasn’t just boredom that prompted him to exercise his empathy for once. After all of his time… _Away_ , using his empathy had taken on a distinctly negative association, a psychological remnant of feeling nothing but hatred and bloodlust and despair for weeks and months and _years_ on end with hardly a glimmer of hope of redemption. He was working on moving past that mindset, but it was difficult. The mind could be an obstinate thing when it wanted to be, holding onto negative perceptions and thought patterns far longer than it needed to -- even his own.

Especially his own.

And so, sitting here in the hospital, in this quiet wing of slumber and solitude, he forced himself to open up his empathy for the first time in weeks. It was the best spot for it, really. It was remote, removed from the hustle and panic of the emergency room and from the dread and desperation of the ICU, negative emotions that leached into the psyche like lead into drinking water. The patients here were subtle and vague, and their few visitors were typically quiet and somber. They weren’t positive emotions, of course, but they weren’t strictly negative, either. It was about as neutral of an emotional ground as he was going to be able to find outside of a dedicated psychiatric facility, and those neutral spaces always felt artificial and plastic to him, anyway, leaving a staticky sort of mental aftertaste on his metaphorical tongue.

Loosened from his physical body, he drifted around the coma ward, riding the currents of thoughts and emotions emanating from the staff and visitors. He stumbled about a bit awkwardly at first, a little out of practice, before finding his mental groove and moving with ease.

She was tinged _sour vomit yellow-green dying grass._ Worry about a loved one, obvious. It was a _coma ward._ He was _dull grey cold concrete paint drying_. Boredom, possibly from a routine job. A janitor, maybe, or receptionist. _Scrapes on hardwood brownish red dusty floor_ , old anger left unresolved, worn to an echo of a grudge. An argument, interrupted by long term illness -- again, coma, _obvious_. _Faded redpink chilled bedcovers standing on tables_. Fell out of love, _not_ because they fell into a coma, interesting, but because of a new, exciting affair. _Yellowed grass concrete floor ice blue water drip drip dripping trapped behind glass_ , worry, boredom, anxiety, and helplessness all rolled into one, now that's _different_ \-- oh, that was himself. Drifted a bit too far, there. He really was out of practice.

Latching a little more securely to his body, he cast a quick empathetic glance over John’s mind, more out of metaphorical-muscle memory than anything else. Nothing, as usual, and Sherlock was about to move on and investigate the ward below when he froze.

He’d felt _nothing._

Slamming back into his body with enough force to give himself a headache, Sherlock leapt from his chair before he even opened his eyes.

It was impossible to feel _nothing_ from someone merely dreaming. People emitted emotions just as easily when they were sleeping as when they were awake -- they might be a bit muddied or nonsensical, but they still had them. Even the coma patients around him registered on his empathy; only the most brain dead of them were silent.

And that was the thing -- John _clearly_ wasn't brain dead. Sherlock could sense him humming away in his mind, the half-dozen telepaths brought in had sensed him, every scan had come up with completely normal levels of brain activity.

_So why wasn't he feeling anything?_

He threw himself to John’s side, snatching up his left hand, the one without the IV. Skin-on-skin contact always helped to increase the conductivity of psychic powers, especially ones with as low of a rating as his empathy had. He was a telepath first, and an empath second -- an out of practice empath, at that. It was entirely plausible he had just missed something while floating around, and the solid connection would prevent him from drifting off by accident.

Shutting his eyes once more, Sherlock lowered his mental shields as far as they could go without getting rid of them completely, opening up his empathy as wide as he was able. He focused on John, concentrating on his mind until the rest of the world seemed to fade away into the background.

He was there, like always, quietly flickering away behind his own natural mental shields, the ones he and John had spent countless hours years before strengthening and stabilizing. Telepathically, there was nothing different about him.

Empathetically… _nothing_.

Sherlock swore under his breath and squeezed his eyes shut tighter, reaching up and pressing his free hand to John's temple. He stretched his mind as far as it would go, scrabbling around the edges of John’s shields, looking for something, _anything._ It was just as smooth as before, but before he hadn't been focused on his empathy, no one had, they were all paying attention to his _mind_ , no one had noticed anything was wrong, they were all stupid, he had been so _stupid…_

… There.

Sherlock inhaled, clenching his hand around John’s fingers. _There_. It wasn't an emotion from John, but it was something.

It was a _block_.

Someone had gotten into John’s head and blocked his emotions. They had forced him into a psychic dream coma, but they had tried to be clever about it. They’d hid their tracks.

They knew the hospital would bring in telepaths, so they kept the paths to his mind clear. It wasn't simply a facade, it was his actual mind, so then they knew _Sherlock_ was psychic, knew that he would recognize when the mind of his friend had been altered. They had counted on it, in fact, _relied_ on the fact that he would see John’s unaltered mind and assume nothing was wrong.

What they _hadn’t_ counted on was his empathy.

While a handful people knew about his telepathy, hardly anyone knew he was empathetic. His parents, Mycroft, and John were the only ones that knew for certain -- a handful of doctors and psychiatrists knew from his childhood, back when he couldn't control his powers, but they knew him only as an anonymous case file, and most of them had likely died of old age by now anyway.

He had never been more glad that his empathy was a secret.

 _Because_ it was a secret, whoever had done this hadn't known to falsify John’s emotions. Because there was a block, he knew someone had trespassed. A crime had been committed in his friend’s mind.

And there was nothing on earth that could stop Sherlock from solving it.

He buzzed for a nurse, reluctant to leave John’s side more than ever now that he knew he had been the victim of a psychic attack, illogical though it was -- the attack had already happened, he couldn’t retroactively protect John from it, but the mind was stubborn. Especially his.

When one finally came in (it was a _coma ward,_ you'd think if there was a call for a nurse they'd come quicker, it wasn't like the patients needed the television channel changed or a new pitcher of water or something, _clearly_ if one was called it was an _emergency_ ), he demanded that the psychic doctor in charge of John's case be brought to his room immediately. He then had to wait an excruciating fifteen minutes, spent fidgeting with the fingers of John's hand and rapidly shifting his weight back and forth in lieu of pacing. She finally arrived, and got no more than a cursory “Mr. Holmes --” out before he cut in.

“John has been the victim of a psychic attack,” he said. The doctor -- Hatcher, was it? Hatchem? -- blinked at him for a moment before stepping further into the room.

“How have you determined that?” she asked. “Obviously something is wrong with him, but none of our psychics have been able to determine a cause.”

“Yes, but that was because we were all looking at his mind _telepathically_ ,” he said. “I've looked at his mind myself countless times these past three days -- yes, I'm psychic, _clearly_ \-- and I never noticed anything that was wrong, either. _Until today_.”

“Today?” The doctor -- Hatching, that was it -- quickly stepped forward, coming up to the other side of John’s bed. “What happened today?”

Sherlock gripped a little tighter to John’s hand. For all of his life, he’d refused to reveal the truth of his empathy to people outside his family, but if it would save John... well. There was quite a lot he was willing to make exceptions for when it came to John.

“I'm a level three telepath, and a level two empath. Today I loosened my shields for a distraction and I noticed…” he paused. “John isn't emitting any emotions.”

Dr. Hatching stared at him.

“B-but that's --”

“Impossible, yes, unless John was brain dead, which he clearly isn't,” he spoke rapidly. “Obviously, someone has broken into his mind and put him into a psychic dream coma -- they knew I was telepathic and would know the feel of John’s mind, so they made the effort to keep his mind clear. They didn't know I was empathetic, and they knew the staff telepaths could only view his mind, so they didn't bother to falsify his emotions.” He pointed to John’s head with his left hand, keeping John’s left tightly clutched in his right. “Every crime leaves evidence, Dr. Hatching, even psychic crimes, and this is ours.”

“If we have evidence of psychic manipulation, this changes everything,” Dr. Hatching nodded. She made a quick note in John’s file, and started to move to the door. “I'll get an empath to come in and confirm your findings, and then we’ll have a dreamsmith come and see what can be done to determine what exactly is holding him in his dream coma.” She paused by the door, looking back at Sherlock still standing by the bed.

“You've given us a wonderful lead. Thank you,” she nodded, and he gave a sharp nod back. She glanced down at his hand, still wrapped around John's, and he gripped it tighter. She looked back up and gave a sympathetic smile. “He's going to be fine, Mr. Holmes, and he’ll have you to thank for it.”

Sherlock just stared at her until she left, and then finally dropped his gaze to their hands, running a thumb over John’s knuckles gently. She was right, of course. John was going to be fine.

He had to be.

 

* * *

 

 

An empath finally arrived nearly an hour later, and proved his diagnosis correct -- John, despite being very much alive and thinking, wasn’t emitting any emotions at all. The redundancy chafed at him, they were just wasting _time_ , time better spent actually trying to _save_ John, but he knew it was necessary; they couldn’t rely on a civilian diagnosis, not legally, and if he allowed them to do their job (however redundant), John would -- eventually -- get the help he needed.

It didn’t make it any easier though.

An appointment with a dreamsmith was scheduled for that evening, the earliest there was a free space, and Sherlock accepted it with a clenched jaw and a curt nod. There was nothing he could do to hurry it all up. Nothing that wouldn’t get him immediately thrown out of the hospital, anyway.

The empath stopped before walking through the door as well, reassuring him that John was “going to be just fine, Mr. Holmes, don’t you worry.” Sherlock rolled his eyes and barely refrained from voicing his deduction about the man’s predilection towards Japanese tentacle porn in his free time. Pissing off the hospital staff might make him feel better in the short term, but then they might ban him from the premises, and that was unacceptable. He had behaved with remarkable patience and self-restraint so far in his opinion; he wasn’t about to mess it up now that they were finally getting somewhere.

Lestrade came in shortly after lunch (not that Sherlock actually ate -- or anyone else in the ward), looking vaguely frazzled. He clutched a half-drank cup of coffee in one hand, black going by the scent and previously established drinking habits, and a thick manila folder in the other. He was in the middle of a case, clearly, and a difficult one at that, but had made the effort to stop by anyway.

John probably would have appreciated that, if he hadn’t been lying insensate on the bed.

“How is he?” Lestrade asked, thankfully foregoing any needless greetings and pleasantries.

“The same as he’s been for the past three days,” Sherlock replied tersely, bouncing a knee rapidly. He’d let go of John’s hand when he heard Lestrade’s footsteps in the hall, and his fingers itched to pick it back up again. Curious how quickly one can get used to something like that. “We’ve discovered evidence he’s been forcibly placed in a psychic dream coma, however.”

“Blimey, really? That’s awful,” Lestrade frowned sympathetically.

Sherlock rolled his eyes. Pop culture had vastly overdramatized dream comas -- it was a very difficult affliction to go through, obviously, but it wasn’t the neverending hellish nightmare of pain and suffering portrayed in movies and late-night medical dramas. Usually.

“Yes, it’s an absolute tragedy,” Sherlock sneered, ignoring how the words didn’t exactly sit as falsely on his tongue as they normally would have, if it had been anyone else lying on that bed. “They’ve scheduled a consultation with a dreamsmith later this evening --” in precisely six hours, twenty-seven minutes, and forty-nine seconds, “-- so John should be fully recovered in no time.”

“Sorry, dreamsmith? What’s --”

“A dreamsmith is a telepath trained in reading and deciphering dreams, as well as entering someone’s sleeping mind and manipulating their dreams and internal mindscape without harming them,” Sherlock rattled off. “The technical term is oneirologist, but dreamsmith is much more evocative, which is very important when dealing with matters of the psyche. They’re typically used in cases of extreme phobias or to assist with PTSD recovery, but they’re also the first line of treatment when dealing with psychic dream comas, for obvious reasons even _you_ should be able to grasp.”

“Right, thanks,” Lestrade said, briefly rolling his eyes. “That’s good, though, isn’t it? That now you know why he hasn’t woken up, I mean.”

“For a given definition of ‘good,’ I suppose, yes.”

“How did they figure it out?” Lestrade said after a moment, sitting down in a chair on the opposite side of John’s bed. “I thought they’d said nothing was wrong with his mind.”

“That’s because there _isn’t_. Physically, his brain is behaving completely normal, and he can still be sensed telepathically. To place someone in a psychic dream coma, the paths through the mind are obscured or blocked completely. It’s how the coma works -- you cut off the mind, nothing gets in or out, and the victim is trapped inside. The paths out of John’s, however, were left completely open, and so the idiot telepaths here --” and he was including himself in that statement, for once -- “ruled out a dream coma entirely. His _emotions_ , however, are still blocked. Everyone emits emotions, _always_ , even when you’re asleep. John isn’t.”

Lestrade furrowed his brow.

“And they didn’t think to check his emotions at the same time?”

“They didn’t check because they _couldn’t_ check,” Sherlock explained. “Hospital staff telepaths are typically only telepathic -- when you add in other branches, such as empathy or clairvoyance, it tends to weaken the strength of each branch. A strict telepath will almost always be stronger and capable of more precision than a split telepath. Occasionally you’ll get someone who is equally as proficient in two branches, but it’s rather rare, and even then they can have bouts of instability. Hospitals are unlikely to take that risk.”

“Then… how did they find out John wasn’t emitting emotions?”

“One of the nurses was empathic. As he was tending to John he noticed his lack of emotions.” It was a safe enough lie, the story believable. He’d asked to remain anonymous in John’s medical file, and Lestrade wasn’t the type to go digging further anyway.

Lestrade nodded agreeably, but then frowned in thought.

“Why couldn't you tell it telepathically, though?” he asked. “Since his mind is still clear. I know you can only catch surface thoughts, but surely you should've noticed what he was dreaming about by now?”

Sherlock sighed.

“People’s minds work differently when they're sleeping,” he said. “You're deeper into your head, it’s more instinctual, time moves funny… The thoughts you project aren't so much thoughts as just proof of activity. Anything that slips out is…” he waved a hand, searching for the right words. “... muddy. Indistinct. It's like listening to a computer whirr -- you can tell what phase of sleep they're in by how active it all is, but you can't tell what's actually going on inside. Emotions are different. They're still foggy and hard to decipher, but they're simpler to begin with. Easier to pass through the layers of the psyche to the surface.”

“You sure know a lot about empathy for someone who’s just a surface telepath,” Lestrade smirked.

Sherlock rolled his eyes.

“It’s imperative for me to know about every variation of psychic ability in my line of work; how they function and how they can be disrupted, and what happens to the individual in question when they are. Not all of us can rely on a consulting psychic to solve their crimes for them,” he sneered.

Lestrade rolled his eyes this time.

“Yes, yes, I’m forever grateful that you deign to grace us with your psychic presence and vast intellect, whatever would we do without you,” he droned, deadpan.

“As long as you recognize it,” Sherlock smirked.

“ _Anyway_ ,” Lestrade changed the subject. “Lucky for us that nurse came in, then. Who knows how long John would’ve been here if he hadn’t.”

Sherlock gazed down at John, pressing a hand to his mouth as he propped his elbow on the arm of the chair.

“Yes. Lucky us,” he quietly replied.

It takes an extraordinary amount of energy and finesse to place someone in a psychic dream coma. Only a very high level telepath could manage it, a level six or seven at the _least_ , and that’s assuming they’ve studied oneirology extensively for several years to gain mastery of the dreamscape. Furthermore, when dealing with matters of the mind, it’s important to go through the path of least resistance as much as possible. It’s relatively easy to block off the mind telepathically; it’s much harder to block off only emotions. Until now, he would’ve said it was impossible. And so he hadn’t even bothered to _check_.

He had theorized before acquiring all the necessary data, and discounted the idea of a psychic dream coma almost immediately. And because of that, John had been trapped in his coma for three additional days. Three days caught in whatever deranged dream that psychic had cooked up for him, with no hope of escape, without even knowing that an escape was _needed_.

It was inexcusable. As soon as John had fully recovered, provided he was willing to allow Sherlock back into his mind, he was going to help John increase his shields’ strength again.

It was the least he could do.

He could feel Lestrade looking at him, but he refused to shift his gaze from John. After a few more minutes of silence, however, he sighed heavily and looked up.

“No.”

Lestrade spluttered.

“I didn’t say anything!”

“No, but you’re thinking it so obviously a psychetypical could've heard it,” Sherlock snapped. “I won’t take it.”

Lestrade sighed, running a hand through his hair.

“Please, Sherlock. It’s a locked room murder-suicide with no weapon. We’ve got nothing to go on, and we’re desperate,” he said.

“That may be the case, but I still won’t come.”

“You’ve been here for three days!” Lestrade exclaimed. “You haven’t left for so much as change of clothes this whole time; haven’t you gone stir crazy by now?” he asked incredulously.

Sherlock just glared at him, crossing his arms. Yes, he had gotten incredibly bored of the bland, grey walls and cramped window two days and eighteen hours ago, but he wasn’t bored enough to leave. He doubted he’d ever get bored enough to leave John’s side, and that was saying something.

A long moment of silence passed, before Lestrade sighed again, passing a hand over his eyes.

“At least _look_ through the file,” Lestrade pleaded, holding it up.

“... Fine,” Sherlock conceded with a sigh of his own. “Leave it on the table,” he gestured with his head to the tiny yet sturdy table placed at the foot of John’s bed. “If I get astonishingly bored, I’ll look through it.”

Lestrade nodded gratefully.

“Thank you,” he said, dropping the folder with a thick _flop_ before standing up to leave. “Text me if you figure anything out, yeah? We need all the help we can get.”

“Yes, fine, whatever,” Sherlock waved a hand dismissively, sinking further back into his chair. Lestrade walked to the door, but paused halfway through the threshold.

“Sherlock?”

“Oh, what is it _now?_ ” Sherlock groaned. Why did everyone feel the need to give a final parting shot at the door? First the doctor, then the staff empath, and now Lestrade?

“... Let me know if anything changes with John, too,” he said, nodding to his slumbering form.

Sherlock bit his lip, before giving a small nod. Lestrade nodded back, slipping out the door and letting it fall shut softly behind him.

Sherlock sighed quietly, reaching out and picking up John’s hand once more. He forgot, sometimes, that Lestrade was as much John’s friend as his own (however reluctant that conclusion initially had been), if not a better friend to John than Sherlock had been recently. Certainly a closer one, although they’d been fixing that. Trying to, anyway.

Sherlock dug his phone out of his pocket, texting one-handed.

_John would have appreciated your visit._

_SH_

A few moments later, the reply came.

_Tell him you’re welcome for me then._

Sherlock quirked the barest hint of a smile. Message received. He set his phone aside, glancing around the room he’d long ago memorized, until his gaze fell on the file. He paused for a moment, and then shrugged, snatching the file and resting it on his crossed legs. He flipped through it with one hand, the other still gripping firmly to John’s.

He really was astonishingly bored, and the dreamsmith wasn’t due for hours yet. He might as well enjoy what little entertainment he could get.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly have no idea what my update schedule will be like, I've been working on this fic since march and I only finished this chapter like two days ago :v but hopefully now that it's out in the world I'll actually have motivation to work on it more ;v;
> 
> thanks for reading!! <3


	2. wind's in the east, mist moving in

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *comes in five months late with starbucks*
> 
> heyyyy, long time no see :V
> 
> SO the reason why this is so stupendously late is threefold: my own sheer laziness (I mean chapter 1 alone took like eight months to work on so we're actually making good time here), I came down with three cases of asthmatic bronchitis and basically had been coughing and wheezing nonstop for three out of five months, and I was in a play adaption of the hound of the baskervilles!! among multiple roles I played sir henry (despite being female dksdkk)!! it was super fun but I'm glad to have my free time back lmao
> 
> ANYWAY LOOK!! we now have chapter titles and a chapter count!!! and chapter 3 is like 90% done bc I cut it off from here bc otherwise it'd be like 14k sdfkdkkd 
> 
> ALSO big thanks to prix again!! my officially-unofficial beta lmao luv u <3 <3 <3

Sherlock’s heel tapped out a frenzied, staccato beat, right hand firmly wrapped around John’s, left hand rapidly forming soundless chords against thin air as he silently ran through Mendelssohn’s _Andante espressivo in A minor Leider_ at double speed.

He had already solved Lestrade’s weaponless murder-suicide hours ago (blisteringly simple once he’d looked at the murdered man’s trouser cuffs, didn’t anybody _notice_ these things anymore?!) and texted him the solution, rearranged the contents of John’s room for the sixth time, solved three cases from his blog and four from Twitter, and remotely changed the ward’s wifi password from his phone twice (once just to see if he could, the second to change it back -- no use making enemies with the nursing staff, after all), and now there was quite literally _nothing else to do_.

The dreamsmith was late.

By over an hour.

And it was _agonizing_.

He hated sitting around waiting for no reason on the best of days, despised it on the worst, but today he _loathed_ it. Every minute they spent dragging their feet was another minute that John was trapped in his own head, and there was nothing he could do about it. It took all of his willpower not to race out, hunt down the dreamsmith himself, and physically drag them back to the room to attend to John, John who was important, John who was invaluable, John who was hurting and there was _nothing he could do--_

The door swung open to reveal a person dressed in a dark suit, tall, with blond hair slicked back; a lanyard slung around their neck bore a hospital-issued ID card.

The dreamsmith, _finally_.

“John Watson, psychic dream coma?” they asked, consulting a file in their hand, stepping further into the room at Sherlock’s confirmation.

“Dr. Aiden Wetherton, dreamsmith,” they continued, holding out a hand Sherlock reluctantly stood up to shake. “And you are?”

“Sherlock Holmes, I’ve been named John’s healthcare proxy.”

Astonishingly, Mycroft hadn’t needed to pull any strings in order to allow Sherlock to remain with John and provide medical input; back when they’d still been living together, they’d signed advance directives listing each other as their potential medical surrogates. With the way their cases had a tendency to fly out of control, and with John having had no real family to speak of at the time (and Sherlock willfully ignoring the existence of his own), it had only made sense in case something happened to one of them.

Sherlock just hadn’t expected John to have kept him on, especially after… everything.

He’d probably just forgotten Sherlock was even listed, that was all.

(Nevermind that a medical professional would be more likely to keep up to date about these kinds of things than your average layperson, and so if Sherlock was still listed that meant he’d _wanted_ Sherlock listed -- no.

No. In all probability he’d had it changed to Mary, and with her death they simply fell back on whoever had been listed previously. Clearly. He’d make sure to bring it up with John after everything was dealt with and get it sorted out.

And if he kept John on as his own healthcare proxy… well. That was his own business.)

“Sorry about the wait, Mr. Holmes,” Dr. Wetherton said. “There was a difficult patient in psychic pediatrics that took longer to deal with than anticipated, they’d gone nonverbal but were psychically projecti--”

“Yes, yes, I don’t actually _care_ ,” Sherlock cut them off, waving a hand dismissively. “Now, if you would be so kind as to treat the man you’re _actually_ here to see?”

The doctor bristled, but walked over to the other side of John’s bed.

“Do you know what caused his accident?”

“It wasn’t an accident, it was _planned,_ ” Sherlock said. “John’s psychetypical, and even if he wasn’t it’s exceedingly difficult to trap yourself in a psychic coma, _obviously_ , and you should --” he bit his lip. Took a deep breath.

Antagonizing the doctors wouldn’t help John. Never mind if it’d make him feel better.

“He was at his therapist’s house for a session,” he said instead. “The police suspect someone broke in. He was shot, and a neighbor called the police. When they arrived, he was bleeding from the wound on his head and unresponsive. He has yet to wake up, despite the injury being less than severe. A nurse noticed he wasn’t emitting emotions despite his mind being perfectly active, and I deduced that he’d been placed in a psychic coma by the shooter. No one’s exactly sure of the motive yet.”

Well, he had a few hypotheses, of course, but nothing concrete enough to mention just yet.

“I see. And he’s completely psychetypical, you said?”

“Yes, although he’s always had naturally strong mental shields. Three years ago I assisted him in strengthening them, along with forming a rudimentary mindscape. The last time I checked, previously to him being admitted, his shields were still fully functional.”

“And this was?”

“Four weeks ago.”

He’d always had trouble keeping his mind to himself, particularly when he was high, and it didn’t take a lot to get him to attempt to reach out to John’s. He’d done it often enough in the past -- it’d almost become a habit, at one point.

John’s mind had been impenetrable as ever.

“Thank you, Mr. Holmes. I’ll take a look at his mind and see what exactly we’re dealing with here.” Dr. Wetherton placed a hand on John’s forehead, shutting their eyes in concentration.

It was silent for several achingly long moments, with nothing but the tick of a nearby clock (just a sixteenth of a second too fast, not noticeable now but in a few weeks’ time they’ll have to readjust the time) and the sound of their collective breathing to break the quiet. Sherlock fidgeted with the cuffs on his jacket, restraining himself from picking up John’s hand once again. No matter how well he shielded, there was a very good chance Dr. Wetherton would be able to detect his presence, and they might get distracted. He wasn’t willing to risk John’s health for a measly bit of personal comfort.

Finally, Dr. Wetherton opened their eyes, removing their hand from John’s forehead.

“You’re absolutely certain Mr. Watson is psychetypical?” they asked, raising an eyebrow.

“ _Doctor_ Watson, and yes, completely. I told you his shields were naturally strong,” he raised his own eyebrow back.

“Yes, they are, extraordinarily so,” they said. “If I didn’t know any better I’d say he was at least a level one telepath, or possibly empath. As it is, I still have my doubts about him. He might not have any actively manifesting psychic skills, but I highly doubt he’s _completely_ psychetypical. But, that’s neither here nor there,” they sighed.

“The point is,” they continued, “I’m unable to break through his shields at the moment. I managed a quick diagnostic scan, just enough to confirm that a psychic dream is the most likely cause for his coma, but that was it. However, there’s another dreamsmith here whose specialty is breaking down unnecessary or extraneous shields that are harming an individual somehow -- my specialty is just manipulation of the actual dreamscape. With her help, I believe I’ll be able to enter Dr. Watson’s dreamscape and bring him back out.”

“And how long will it take to bring her here?”

“No more than fifteen minutes, I imagine. Half an hour at most.”

Sherlock sighed softly.

“Yes, alright.”

All of this waiting around was truly _hateful_ , but it was the only way to help John.

Seventeen minutes (and forty-seven seconds) later, the other dreamsmith arrived, her slight frame dwarfed by Dr. Wetherton’s and Sherlock’s own taller statures. She was accompanied by another general staff telepath, who was a scrawny, older man with glasses, and a nurse in bright green scrubs that belied how utterly unremarkable he looked.

“My name is Dr. Jindal,” she said, lightly accented, “and this is Dr. King and Mr. Raymoor. Mr. Raymoor was the empath who confirmed that Dr. Watson wasn’t emitting any emotions, correct?” she asked.

Sherlock raised an eyebrow, and looked over at the nurse, who met his gaze serenely.

Clearly Mycroft had been busy.

“Yes, he is,” Sherlock lied.

“Excellent,” Dr. Jindal said. “He’s here to help verify if there’s any change in Dr. Watson’s emotional state, and Dr. King will monitor his general telepathic state. When you’re trying to infiltrate someone’s shields, it can be difficult to maintain perspective of the larger picture,” she said. “This way, if something happens or Dr. Watson reacts unfavorably to our presence, we have someone on the outside that can lead us out.”

Sherlock nodded. It was one of the reasons why a psychic dream coma was so dangerous -- if left untreated, the victim would waste away trapped within their own subconscious, and if treated _improperly_ by an unskilled psychic, they ran the risk of trapping themselves in the victim’s mind as well, unable to return to their own body. There had been countless numbers of deaths caused by improperly treated psychic comas over the years, whether by trained professionals who reacted just an instant too late, or by idiots who _just couldn’t bear_ seeing their loved ones lying in a coma and went in after them on their own.

The psychics set themselves up around John’s bed, Drs. Wetherton and Jindal on either side of John’s head, each with a hand on his forehead, Dr. King further down by his left, with his hand resting on top of John’s, and Raymoor standing at the foot of the bed.

Sherlock could feel they all lowered their shields, their consciousnesses brushing against his, and he instinctively tightened his own. His mind was his own, and he didn’t appreciate random people attempting to weasel their way in, no matter how benign their intentions appeared to be.

Besides, Raymoor almost certainly was involved with Mycroft’s people, if not outright hired by the man, and that was just all the more reason to keep him out of Sherlock’s head, in his opinion.

Dr. Jindal gave a quiet countdown, and together she and Dr. Wetherton descended into John’s mind once more. This time, they stayed under for quite a lot longer than Dr. Wetherton’s initial diagnosis attempt, utterly motionless barring their breathing. Dr. King shifted his weight a few times as the minutes ticked on, but Raymoor remained as still as the dreamsmiths.

After ten minutes, Sherlock sighed explosively (Dr. King blinked at him for a moment, Raymore didn’t so much as twitch) and collapsed into the visitor’s chair, pulling out his phone.

If he had to sit here and wait impotently while the doctors attempted to infiltrate John’s mind, he might as well brush up on his knowledge of oneirology.

An excruciating hour and twenty-seven minutes later, the dreamsmiths finally pulled themselves out, Dr. Wetherton looking drained and Dr. Jindal rubbing at her temples. Sherlock furrowed his brows.

“It didn’t work,” he stated before anyone could speak.

Dr. Jindal sighed.

“No, it didn’t,” she said. “I’ve worked with some tough cases, but that man has the most impenetrable shields I’ve ever seen, and I’ve assisted former Special Ops before.”

Sherlock frowned.

John’s mind had always been naturally rigid against intrusion, sure, but Sherlock had never had a particularly hard time getting in before. Even nowadays, it was mostly his own personal respect for John (and desire to atone in whatever way he was able to) that kept Sherlock from even so much as skimming for the barest sense of his surface thoughts.

“Could it be a side effect of the dream coma?” he asked. “The block is on his emotions, but that wouldn’t mean they couldn’t have reinforced it telepathically.”

“Possibly?” Dr. Jindal hedged. “If it is, I’ve never seen a psychic dream coma manifest itself in this way before. Additionally, it doesn’t feel artificial; I have no real empathetic skill, and even I can sense the foreign block on his emotions. His telepathic shields don’t have that sense about them.”

“I agree,” Dr. Wetherton said, sinking down into the other visitor’s chair. “Whatever the cause, Dr. Watson’s shields are fully his own.”

“How are they manifesting?” Sherlock asked. When Dr. Jindal looked askance at him he snapped, “I’m his healthcare proxy, I’m _allowed_ to know!”

“They’re manifesting almost like a maze, of sorts,” Dr. Wetherton answered instead. “Except they’re… smooth. His outermost shield is somewhat permeable, and that was as far as I was able to go earlier. After that point, no matter how far we try to go, we just keep getting pushed back to that first shield. It’s like we’re running around in circles without ever actually moving any deeper.” Dr. Jindal nodded wordlessly.

Steepling his hands against his mouth, Sherlock started to pace around the limited amount of space available in the room. That sounded like the technique he and John had come up with all those years ago to strengthen his shields, but it shouldn’t have made them utterly impenetrable, especially to a dreamsmith as skilled as Dr. Jindal presumably was.

For someone psychetypical, John’s _were_ unusually strong, yes -- every psychic who had ever looked at John had had to ask if they were certain he wasn't psychedivergent in some way -- but they weren't impenetrable. No psychetypical’s ever was, really; it might be a little difficult to find, but there always was a way inside. Even being psychedivergent didn't necessarily protect you -- Sherlock had some of the strongest mental shields in England, and he still could be susceptible to psychic attacks if he wasn't careful.

Additionally, being psychetypical, John didn’t have the mental finesse and power necessary to erect the kinds of shields Sherlock and other telepaths had -- hence the maze. It took less power to form and maintain, since there was technically less substance there. If mental shields were like physical walls, Sherlock’s were walls of solid iron twenty feet thick, whereas John’s were more like five feet of steel spread out over a twenty foot diameter. What power he saved in having thinner walls was then able to be used in strengthening the walls themselves, to keep someone from just bulldozing them over.

The maze manifesting as a smooth surface was a quirk of John’s psychetypical nature, and one that worked to his advantage. It was hard enough to maintain the maze theoretically-- when it came to manifesting it physically (well, physically in a figurative way -- the English language was woefully ill-equipped to deal with the metaphysical attributes of the psychic sciences), it was nothing more than a vague, basic wall hovering at the edges of John’s consciousness. Your average psychic would only be able to perceive the wall in general, and leave it at that; a skilled one would be hung up on the fact that while they could sense a maze stretching farther into John’s mind, all they could actually see was the wall.

However, there _was_ still an entrance. It was a necessity when it came to erecting shields, especially in someone else’s head. Otherwise, you were liable to get trapped, either in your own head or another’s -- something that Sherlock and John had learned firsthand, all those years ago. The entrance was well hidden, yes, but it was still there, and Dr. Jindal should have been able to find it after an hour of searching.

It just didn’t make _sense_.

Nothing on the surface of John’s mind had indicated that his shields had spontaneously strengthened themselves beyond what all reason said he should’ve been able to do, and Sherlock would _know_ , it had been years but he still knew the feel of John’s mind, he had spent hours and _hours_ working with John in his mind, teaching him how to harness the power of his own subconscious, he knew the depth and weight of it like it was his own, he’d helped him create those very shields, he…

Wait.

“I helped him create his shields,” he blurted out, freezing mid-stride. The doctors were staring at him, startled, and he got the sense that he’d probably interrupted them, but he didn’t actually care.

“I helped create his shields,” he repeated. “If anyone can get through them, it should be me.”

“Mr. Holmes, we can’t let you do that,” Dr. Wetherton said. “You’re a civilian, we can’t have that kind of liability on our hands --”

“Give me three hours and you won’t have to,” he said, already pulling out his phone and texting Mycroft the credentials and clearances he needed.

“Have you even studied oneirology before?” Dr. Jindal asked.

“Not extensively, but that’s what the three hours are for. I could probably do it perfectly fine now, but I won’t risk John’s mind like that. Now shut up, I need to concentrate,” Sherlock snapped. The doctors likely tried to continue arguing with him but he ignored them, already deep into an online oneirological textbook. Mycroft would send a minion in to smooth things over soon enough.

 

* * *

 

Three hours later, his mind was filled to the brim with every fact and technique dedicated to oneirology and the art of dreamsmithing, and he had the certification to prove it.

Now it was time to put that knowledge to the test.

He stepped up to the head of John’s bed, Dr. Jindal to his right, and Dr. Wetherton across. Dr. King and Raymoor were on either side at John’s feet, functioning essentially as lookouts once more. He raised his left hand and rested his fingers against John’s temple, curling his right around John’s left once more. Dr. Wetherton placed their own hand on John’s other temple, and Dr. Jindal rested hers on Sherlock and John’s joined hands.

“Now, remember,” she said, “your only job is to get us past Dr. Watson’s shields; leave the actual dreamsmithing to Dr. Wetherton. I’ll be shadowing you, in case you get stuck.”

She squeezed his hand lightly.

“Good luck,” she said quietly.

Sherlock glanced down at her out of the corner of his eye, and then looked back at John’s sleeping face.

Ordinarily, he’d scoff at the very concept of _luck_.

However, this whole situation was far from ordinary.

“Thank you,” he murmured, and dropped his telepathic shields. He kept his empathic shields tightly closed, however -- it was always difficult to keep his empathy at bay when entering someone’s mind, and at such a close mental distance it’d be extremely difficult to keep his empathic abilities a secret from the dreamsmiths -- not to mention the ensuing emotional chatter would be incredibly distracting. He needed to keep as clear of a mind as possible. As it was, he was liable to get still bleedthrough from Dr. Jindal -- it was always harder to block out emotions when in prolonged physical contact with someone.

He felt Dr. Jindal lower her shields first, through their hands, and Dr. Wetherton a moment later, followed by Dr. King and Raymoor. The doctors all had the same trained, bland, nondescript mental presence that signified a telepathic medical personnel, with only the barest hints of personalities behind their impersonal facades. Raymoor’s was all but imperceptible.

Sherlock took a fortifying breath.

The stage was set, the actors in place.

_Time to begin._

He murmured a countdown, and then dove headfirst into John’s mind.

The edge of John’s consciousness was the same as it had always been; a dim, vague sort of area, full of shadows and half-formed shapes in the distance. His outermost shield manifested as a sort of misty wall, and as Sherlock moved closer he could feel Dr. Jindal and Dr. Wetherton’s minds flanking him.

He could still sense his physical surroundings, the weight of John’s hand and the barest murmur of the others’ thoughts, but it was far away and muted. He knew from experience if he concentrated he could get a clearer sense of the physical world around him while still maintaining a hold of John’s mind, but he wasn’t concerned about that now. The hospital was safe. _He_ was safe.

Sherlock stretched his awareness further out, moving gently through the permeable outer wall, towards where he knew the edge of the maze started. It was dense, not unlike wading through syrup, but not so thick as to truly hinder his passage, and he moved through with (relative) ease.

Tethered together as they were, Sherlock could sense Dr. Jindal’s ( _Abani_ , the flavor of her mind whispered, _her name was Abani and she was much more anxious about her job than what she led others to believe and she had two cats and missed her sister dearly and--_ he swiftly cut off that train of thought before he spiraled further down) thoughts much easier than he could sense Dr. Wetherton’s, and she was _lemon yellow switched drinks static electricity_ surprised he’d found his way through John’s outer shield so quickly.

He scoffed inwardly, not caring that she would undoubtedly sense it. Of course he knew how to get through John’s shields, that was the whole reason why he was even _here_.

They reached the edge of the maze easily, the perceptible wall smooth, if vague, and its true depths stretching farther into John’s mind, convoluted and confusing.

Another benefit to John’s psychetypical nature -- it was difficult for him to map out the actual maze and constantly hold it in his mind, and so he would merely think of it as a maze in general, and let his subconscious do the rest of the work. Since he never planned it out beyond simply “a maze,” it changed every time you attempted to enter his mind. More secure than any randomly-generated encrypted password could ever hope to be.

Sherlock drifted along the edge of the maze, stretching his consciousness wide and looking for the entrance, Dr. Jindal and Dr. Wetherton bobbing along in his wake. He wasn’t expecting to find it immediately, of course, but the fact was, he’d made his way through John’s outer shield in mere moments, as opposed to the roughly twenty to thirty real-time minutes Dr. Jindal had calculated it took her and Dr. Wetherton alone. If anyone could find the entrance, it would be Sherlock.

Except, as the minutes wore on, it didn’t seem as though Sherlock was getting any closer to finding the entrance. He’d circled John’s mind four times over (or thereabouts, at least; the mind was vague, and perception was everything. The more he got frustrated, the more distance it seemed like he needed to cover), and he’d found no hint of the maze’s entrance.

He growled lowly, trying to shove his _pebble in a shoe day-glo orange ruined evidence_ irritation down before it could bubble up farther and potentially manifest itself.

Of course, with the distraction of his irritation gone, his despair had room to well up and seep out, sticking _black tar edge of a rooftop death grey_ against his thoughts and weighing him down.

If anyone could find the entrance, it would be Sherlock.

And if _he_ couldn’t find the entrance...

He sighed, halting his increasingly-agitated search for the entrance, and sank down to what amounted as a floor. He reached out to the wall, brushing a metaphorical hand directly against it this time, as opposed to merely glancing his awareness around it.

“ _I just want to help you_ ,” he whispered in his mind. Possibly might have said aloud, in the physical world, as well. It was hard to tell.

The wall gave beneath his hand, just the smallest amount.

Sherlock startled, and, behind him, felt Dr. Jindal and Dr. Wetherton do the same, surging forward to meet him.

The instant they moved, however, the wall became impenetrable once again.

And it all clicked into place.

Sherlock drew back from the maze’s wall, back through the thick fog of John’s outer shield, and forcibly dragged Dr. Jindal and Dr. Wetherton along with him, moving as fast as he dared to exit the edge of John’s mind as quickly as possible.

“I know why John’s maze has no entrance,” he said the instant they were all back in their own heads, the dreamsmiths looking a little dazed at the swift, forced transition.

“He’s locked himself in his own mind, barricaded himself against any possible intruder,” he continued rapidly. “It was likely instinctual, once he sensed the intrusion of the psychic who placed him in the coma. He tried to block them out entirely, but it backfired, and now he’s trapped in his mind twice over.”

“And since he’s psychetypical,” Dr. Jindal added, swept along by Sherlock’s energy, “it was an imperfect lockdown. He’s had minor training, so it’s a very effective block for larger entities, but smaller things are unaffected. That’s why we can still sense his passive thoughts -- they’re small enough to pass through, but his actual consciousness is still trapped. Like he’s standing behind an iron gate.”

“Able to be seen, but unable to leave,” Sherlock intoned.

“But… what was that, then, at the end?” Dr. Wetherton asked. “For a moment it almost felt like you’d found the entrance, but --”

“That’s because I did,” Sherlock interrupted. “That is, I found where it _would_ have been, had John not locked down his shields. It wasn’t quite reinforced as well as the other walls -- entrances are always a weak point in one’s shields. However, the moment your presences were sensed, his shields locked down entirely once more. It doesn’t matter that you have helpful intentions -- to his mind, _anyone_ could be a potential threat, and so he’s locked everything out indiscriminately.”

“But why were you able to find that weak point, then?” Dr. Jindal asked. “Why was it only once his mind sensed _us_ that it locked down?”

Sherlock paused for a moment, thinking.

“I’ve said before, I helped him create his shields,” he said, slowly. “I’m the only person he’s allowed into his dreamscape. It’s been years, but…” he trailed off.

He’d only had any real results when he actually made contact with John’s shields, as opposed to just skimming them. Maybe if he --

… No. It wasn’t the contact that made the difference. Or, at least, it wasn’t the only factor.

_Day-glo orange. Pebble in a shoe. Death grey. Edge of a rooftop._

Irritation. Despair. Surging up, consuming him, weighing him down.

It wasn’t just the telepathic contact.

 _It was his empathy_.

“I’m going to go into John’s mind, alone,” he said suddenly. Dr. Jindal and Dr. Wetherton both burst into immediate denials.

“No, Mr. Holmes, we can’t allow you to do that on your own, you could --”

“It’s one thing to assist us in moving past his shields, it’s another to --”

“ _I’m the only one that can do it!_ ” Sherlock shouted.

The dreamsmiths fell silent.

“... I’m the only one who has any real chance,” he went on, quieter. “He let me in, just the tiniest amount, for a fraction of an instant just now. If it’s just me, he might let me in the rest of the way.”

He looked down at John, at his hand still wrapped around John’s, at his fingers still at John’s temple. He brushed back John’s fringe, uncaring that he was in full view of the dreamsmiths.

“It’s worth a shot, at least,” he said quietly.

A long moment passed. No one spoke, and he refused to look up.

“... Very well.” Dr. Wetherton said at last.

Dr. Jindal sighed, but then nodded her head.

“We’ll be monitoring you telepathically, but barring an emergency we won’t make physical contact with either one of you,” she said. “That’s as much as we can allow.”

Sherlock nodded once. He knew not to push his luck -- they were going to be breaking quite a few rules and regulations as it was.

“Give us half an hour to prepare,” Dr. Wetherton said. “Since you’re a civilian, and this is a very unusual case, we have to take some extra precautions. We’ll set you up with an IV, in case it takes too long and you become dehydrated, or in case something happens and we need to medically sustain you until one of us can come in and remove you from Dr. Watson’s mind. We also have some paperwork that you’ll need to sign. Liabilities, you know,” they smiled wryly.

Sherlock merely nodded again, stifling another sigh at all the _waiting_. He was willing to go through quite a lot if it ensured that they would be able to get John back.

That _he_ would be able to get John back.

He glanced back to John as the doctors started bustling around, preparing the room or getting _paperwork_ or some other trivial matter.

John had been trapped inside his own head for four days, nine hours, and twelve minutes. Only he knew what horrors he could potentially be facing.

Sherlock had been helpless, unable to do anything but _watch him sleep_ for four days, seven hours, and seven minutes. But that was all going to change.

He was finally able to _do something_.

He was going to bring John back out of his own head. No matter what.

… It was the least he could do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> now if u do the math you'll see in this chapter (and esp in a later chapter) that the dates are wrong and that I've managed to smash the entirety of s4 into about four months. my defense behind that decision is partially a) I have a good reason for it that I don't want to explain now sdkdkdk but mostly b) mofftiss conjured up the girl from the ring and let her loose on saw island. I, too, can do what I want :V


	3. like something is brewing, about to begin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so I have. lots of little excuses for why this is. so unbelievably late but tbh most of it is just. me being unable to muster the motivation to work on it. I've made it a resolution this year to post at least one chapter a month so? hopefully updates will be more frequent but who knows tbh
> 
> additionally we've had some health problems in my family which. hasn't helped and might affect my ability to update in february -- I'll explain more in the end notes to keep from stretching this out too much :V
> 
> thank u again to bunny-formerly-known-as-prix for the beta help!!! <3 <3 <3 <3
> 
> also thanks to ariane devere and her transcripts!! without which I would've had to watch tfp 600 times to write this and the following chapters and no one should have to go through that
> 
> (that being said while this chapter literally doubles the length of this fic it's also like 90% tfp which is atrocious I know but bear with me ok it'll be worth it in the end)
> 
> and happy jan 29th everyone :0

Twenty-seven minutes later, as promised, everything was set up in preparation for his descent into John’s mind and, hopefully, subsequent retrieval. An IV cannula was taped to the back of his left hand (too much scar tissue in the crooks of his elbows -- besides, this way it didn’t pull uncomfortably whenever he moved his arm), disconnected for now, but a pole with a bag of saline was waiting nearby, just in case.

The doctors were situated around the bed once more, Dr. Jindal and Dr. Wetherton to the left and right near the head, and Dr. King and Raymoor at the foot, far enough away from the bed to avoid accidental physical contact, but close enough to avoid any undue strain on their telepathy. A second nurse was standing off to the side, prepared to intervene if physically necessary (whether it be simply connecting him to the saline bag to avoid dehydration, or injecting medication to sustain him, should the worst happen).

This time, he sat on the edge of John’s bed, facing him as directly as he could. Since they didn’t know how long the process would take, it wouldn’t do to tire out his body unnecessarily -- and this way, if his body collapsed for whatever reason, he only had a few inches to fall as opposed to several feet.

He flexed his hands, biting back a surge of nervousness, and reached out to settle them lightly on John’s temples, thumbs barely grazing his cheekbones. _Déjà vu_ swept over him for a moment, throwing him back three years, seven months, and nineteen days. Back to the very first time he’d held John’s head like this. Back to the very first time John had allowed him into his mind.

Back to the very first time Sherlock had realized a person’s mind could feel like _home._

He swallowed tightly, and gently brushed a thumb against John’s cheek, much like he’d done all those years ago.

Hopefully, like that first time, John still trusted him enough to let him in.

“Shields down,” he said quietly, and saw Dr. Jindal nod out of the corner of his eye. He felt the doctors lower their shields around him, although not to the extent of before. They were only there to monitor him, after all, not infiltrate a subconscious.

A moment later, he dropped his own telepathic shields, feeling the neutral pockets of their thoughts ebb around him.

He hesitated in dropping his empathetic shields, however.

He hadn’t exposed his empathy with people in the room since his time Away, back when it was a tool, a resource, a _weapon_ he used to track down his targets, only to have that weapon swiftly turned against him, filling his mind and soul with the vilest and sickest of thoughts and feelings and _intentions_ that clung to his heart like tar and blacked out the sun and drowned him in their darkness until he felt like he was going to _die_ there suffocating and _alone_ and --

No.

No.

It wasn’t like that anymore, he got out, he was safe, he was in London and in a hospital surrounded by doctors that Mycroft had no doubt personally vetted and he was _safe._

He was safe.

But John wasn’t.

He inhaled raggedly, held it, and as he shakily exhaled he slowly loosened his empathetic shields, letting them fall inch by inch. The doctors’ emotions surged against him, unknowingly unprotected (and why should they be, for all they knew he was just a telepath like them) and dizzyingly potent. He swallowed back nausea as they swept over him, churning in the air like storm clouds. Only Raymoor was calm, the lone island in a roiling sea, projecting nothing but a subtle current of _ancient mountains charcoal grey parade rest_ steady professionalism, and he clung to it as he road out the surge.

His shields were finally down, _all_ of his shields, and he could hear everything, _feel_ everything, could hear nurses three rooms over discuss IV drips, could hear the doctors thinking about prognosis and the likelihood of his success and what to do next if he failed, _when_ he failed, could feel their _acidic bile noxious orange churning stomach_ unwanted _pity_ , but where John was supposed to be was blank, completely blank, he was an empty pit no he was worse than an empty pit because even a pit had something inside it even if it was just its own ground and John was just _nothing_ absolutely _nothing_ when he should be light and warmth and home and instead the static of his thoughts skittered across the _void_ where his heart should be and that was _wrong_ it was _wrongwrongwrong_ and he didn't know how to fix it but he had to _try_ but it was impossible to think when all he could do was _feel. every. thing_.

He had to find a focus point. _Find a focus point, Sherlock_ , Mycroft would say, back when they were young and Mycroft was kind and he was drowning in his own empathy and thought the world of his big brother. _Find a focus point and concentrate, and let the rest fall into place on its own_.

John. He could focus on John. It worked in Serbia, and that was when he was just a memory.

He ignored the aching _void_ his empathy was screaming against and focused his telepathy on John’s mind, on the hum and whisper of his thoughts, patterns long-ago memorized and as comforting and familiar as the vibration of his violin under his fingers, the silk of his favorite dressing gown, the smell of tea and toast and Scottish wool.

He focused on John, and _breathed_.

Finally, the tempest calmed, and he was able to rise above the ocean of sensation and _feeling_. He opened his eyes, unsure of when he had shut them, and glanced at the doctors. They looked a little concerned, which he ignored.

“I’m ready,” he said, and before they could reply he closed his eyes once more and sank into John’s mind.

He was greeted once again by the misty outer wall, and moved easily through it to the inner maze. He gazed at the smooth wall, stretching as far as his (theoretical) eye could see, and took a fortifying breath, letting it all go in a gust of a sigh.

_Once more unto the breach._

He drifted slowly along the inner wall once again, psychically brushing against it, but this time he kept his empathy engaged. He pushed out _yellow-green chewed cuffs rapid metronome_ worried concern (the strongest emotion he was feeling, had been feeling for _days_ , feared he would never _stop_ feeling), sending it out into the void surrounding him.

It was strange, almost difficult, using his empathy in this way. He had never been the strongest of projectors (truth be told, his projection abilities were all but nil, a subject of much derision by Mycroft, both when they were young and today), and it was exhausting trying to push past the raw _emptiness_ of John’s emotions. Moreover, his empathy was swiftly becoming overworked, making every emotion and sensation that much rougher and more abrasive, which only hastened his fatigue.

Still. He was the only one who could save John. He’d gone through worse for him, and with less chance of success. What was a little personal discomfort, when John’s very mind was in the balance?

Time snagged, hours and minutes mottled together in disparate sludge as he continued to search. Time always moved funny in the dreamscape, extremely reliant as it was on personal perception, but usually he was able to keep a handle on the conversion between real time and the dreamscape. It was disconcerting to be losing control like this.

Then again, he’d never pushed his mental faculties quite this far in such a way in this short of time.

He stumbled to a halt, still locked outside John’s maze, exhausted. Obviously, he was _still_ doing something wrong. Pushing his emotions at John wasn’t working, even though it had _clearly_ worked before, none of this was making _sense_ , he had been here for hours and he had done _nothing,_ he had nothing to show for it but John’s empty heart and his own bruised, raw empathy.

He sank down to the theoretical floor once more, curled into a sore, aching bundle, pressed against the ironclad walls of John’s mind. He tried to clear his thoughts, forcefully pushing past the mire of lethargy weighing him down.

_Whenever you’ve made a mistake, Sherlock, start over from the beginning. Retrace your steps one by one, and find out where you went wrong._

He had been irritated. He had despaired. He had sat down, just like this. He had made contact with John’s shield. He had…

_He had spoken to John directly._

Oh, he was an absolute _idiot_.

He snapped back up, invigorated by the hope of finally, _finally_ getting it _right_.

_First, physical contact._

He was already in contact with John, obviously, but a clearer connection would help. He leaned to press his metaphorical forehead against the inner shield, and sent the briefest of signals to his physical body to do the same, pressing his real forehead against John’s. Hopefully they wouldn’t think he was actually fainting.

_Second, make your presence known._

He pushed out a sense of himself, a sort of empathic ‘ _hello, I’m here, may I come in_?’, not dissimilar to the telepathic contact he would make when attempting to initiate a link. Instead of sending it vaguely into the echoes of John’s mind like he’d been trying with his emotions, he pushed it directly into the shield, sending the signal racing along its hidden maze, like electricity through a tangle of fibre optics.

_Third, announce your intent._

_‘I want to help, John. Let me help you,’_ he sent.

No response.

Not to be deterred, not when he was _so close_ , he extended his awareness, crawling across John’s mind like a spiderweb, like ivy, like gossamer.

 _‘Let me in, John. You need to let me in,’_ he pushed, but gently, gently.

Nothing, but...

Stretched as he was, enveloping John in his own mind, he could sense the faintest glimmer of recognition. A crack in the wall. A chip in the armor.

It wasn’t a response. It wasn’t even conscious.

But it was _something_.

 _“_ It’s me, it’s Sherlock, let me in. Please, John, it's just me, _please_ ," he whispered, _begged,_ and suddenly the misty expanse of John’s shields fell away and he was sucked, twisting and turning, into John's head. He had approximately a millisecond to bask in the _warmsafesecureHome_ sensation of John’s mind before everything shifted and Sherlock was thrown into his dream. … He didn’t know what was happening. It was the middle of the night. He was standing on the landing of a staircase in an elaborate house, the kind associated with period dramas and old money, wearing his coat and that blasted deerstalker, and… there was a clown. Holding a sword.

He really didn’t know what was happening.

Down below on the first floor was Mycroft, practically naked (by his standards) and visibly terrified. He looked like he was mere moments from pissing himself, and his voice shook when he spoke.

“Sherlock…? Help me!” he pleaded. He pleaded. For _Sherlock_. He _really_ didn’t know what was happening _at all_. So he took a metaphorical step back and let the dream have most of the control for a while -- mustn't theorize before the data, after all, and he really, truly had no idea what could possibly have reduced Mycroft to that state, psychic-induced dream hallucination or not.

A hand raised itself to his lips, and he let out a piercing whistle. The lights flashed on, and in addition to the… clown… a short man wearing a dress and a wig walked out of a doorway on the ground floor. His mouth opened of its own accord.

“Experiment complete,” he found himself saying. “Conclusion: I have a sister.”

… A _sister_? _That_ was what John was dreaming about, _that_ was what had kept him locked up in a psychic coma three days? A dream about Sherlock having a sister? He tried to cast his mind over what little he could access of John’s memories, struggling to understand while the dream continued.

The memories were misty, ephemeral, the pathways blocked from his access. Now that he was inside John’s mind, more specifically inside his psychic coma, his telepathy and empathy were likewise severely muted. He got a vague sense of a brightly lit home, a rug like spilled blood. A plastic daisy against silvered hair. Mismatched eyes, brown and steel blue. A dark shape, held at eye level… a gun? The harder he tried to pin something down, the faster it got away.

There was something he was missing, something that would explain why John was dreaming about old money mansions and made-up Holmes sisters. Although, that would explain the man dressed like a little girl. Sort of.

It didn’t explain the clown at all, however.

“This was you?” Mycroft was saying. “All of this was _you?_ ”

“Conclusion two: my sister -- Eurus, apparently --” _Eurus?_ What kind of a name was that? “-- has been incarcerated from an early age in a secure institution controlled by my brother.” Below him, Mycroft pressed his hands against his eyes. Sherlock’s hand raised itself and waved at him cheekily. “Hey bro!” he smirked.

“Why would you do this… this _pantomime?_ ” Mycroft asked, lowering his hands. “ _Why?_ ”

Sherlock plowed ahead, ignoring him.

“Conclusion three: you are _terrified_ of her!”

“You have no idea what you’re dealing with. _None_ at all,” Mycroft glared.

And there lay the heart of it. Clearly this Eurus was the key to the coma, or at least a very large component of it. If he solved the mystery of Eurus, he’d solve the mystery of the coma, and find a way to bring John back out of his own mind.

As if summoned, John himself stepped out of a corridor down on the ground floor. It truly was John, and not a dream avatar like Mycroft -- Sherlock could feel the difference from where he still stood on the landing, even muted as he was. He was surrounded by John, obviously, this being his dream, but here his essence felt more… centered. Concentrated.

Sherlock felt something deep in his chest give a sigh of relief. If John was actually _inside_ this dream, it made everything much easier for Sherlock. He had no idea what he would’ve done if John had merely been a passive observer, removed from everything and untouchable.

“New information,” John said. “She’s out.”

“That’s not possible,” Mycroft said.

“It’s more than possible,” Sherlock replied. “She was John’s therapist.”

… Ah. That matched up with John’s memories, and his own vague recollections of the house from when he’d been high. He had deduced that the shooter had posed as John’s therapist, who’d been found stuffed into a bag in her own airing cupboard, asphyxiated. It was nice to get a confirmation.

“Shot me during a session,” John said.

“Only with a tranquilizer.”

Wrong. The bullet had been horribly, terrifyingly real. However, whatever the dream entailed apparently needed John to be at his physical best, so clearly some justification was needed. John (well, his dream body) wasn’t wounded, so clearly the gun _must_ have been a tranquilizer. _Obvious_.

“Mm. We still had ten minutes to go,” John mused.

“Well, we’ll see about a refund,” Sherlock smirked. John grinned at him, and Sherlock’s heart clenched a bit at the sight.

It had been so long since he’d seen him smile like that.

“Right, you two,” he continued, speaking to the man and clown as his feet moved him down the stairs. “Wiggins has your money by the gate. Don’t spend it all in one crack den.”

… He knew John was still angry about his recent relapse, but it stung nonetheless. John finding him in that den back when they were dealing with Magnussen was still a touchy subject between them, and that had been over a year ago; he wondered how long he’d be paying for it now. If it had a cumulative effect, because it had lasted longer this time. Because it had been for more than just a case this time.

Because he’d meant it, this time.

The short man ran off, followed by the clown, who of course honked his nose. Because no dream involving clowns was complete without that cliche.

Sherlock walked up to Mycroft, smiling.

“I hope we didn’t spoil your enjoyment of the movie.”

“You’re just _leaving?_ ” Mycroft asked, aghast.

“Well, we’re not staying _here_. Eurus is coming, and uh. Someone’s disabled all your security,” he smirked. He strode to a nearby door, opening it with a flourish and walking away.

“Sleep well!” he tossed over his shoulder. He heard John start to follow, but he stopped as Mycroft turned to speak to him.

The dream loosened its hold on Sherlock, the script having indicated he was already long gone. He hovered by the door, out of sight and figuratively out of mind, as it continued without him.

“Doctor Watson,” Mycroft was saying. “Why would he do that to me? That was insane!”

“Uh, yes,” John said. “Well, _someone_ convinced him that you wouldn’t tell the truth unless you were _actually_ wetting yourself.”

Finally, the clown was explained. Not that Mycroft was actually afraid of clowns in real life -- clearly John had some deep-seated fears no one knew about.

Or maybe he'd just watched one too many horror films. Both were likely.

“‘Someone’?” Mycroft drawled.

John hesitated a beat, looking away mock-thoughtfully, before turning back.

“Probably me.”

Sherlock grinned, unseen. Good old John.

“So that’s it, is it? You’re just going?” Mycroft asked, incredulous. John looked at him innocently.

“Well, don’t worry. There’s a place for people like you -- the desperate, the terrified. The ones with nowhere else to run.”

“ _What_ place?” Mycroft asked.

Sherlock raised an eyebrow. Where else, idiot?

Across the hall, John looked at Mycroft in much the same manner. _Where else?_

“221b Baker Street.”

Mycroft shut his eyes, sighing deeply. John turned neatly and walked towards the door Sherlock was loitering behind.

“See you in the morning,” he said. “If there’s a queue, join it!”

Sherlock’s grin stretched wider. _Good old John_.

“For God’s sake!” Mycroft spat after him. “This is not one of your idiot cases!”

John paused, raised a finger as though he’d forgotten something, and walked back to Mycroft, pointing upstairs at the landing Sherlock had appeared on when he’d dropped into the dream.

“You might wanna close that window.” He gave a significant look to Mycroft. “There _is_ an East Wind coming.” He gave his tiny little smile, turned, and walked away again.

Sherlock clenched his hands deep within his coat pockets as John strode toward him. Any moment now, he’d be right beside him --

\-- and then, with all the logic of dreams, the setting abruptly changed. They were in 221b, midday, seated in their chairs. Sherlock’s hands were steepled, John had a notebook and pen, and the client chair was set up to the side. A familiar scene, although the placement of his brother was new.

Clearly someone was having trouble accepting his status as _client_.

John glanced at Mycroft before looking away. Mycroft pursed his lips. Sherlock ignored him.

“You have to sit in the chair,” Mrs. Hudson said from the doorway. Mycroft looked at her. “They won’t talk to you unless you sit in the chair,” she went on, smiling. “It’s the rules.”

Mycroft scoffed.

“I’m not a _client_.”

“Then get out,” Sherlock shot back, not so much as glancing at him.

Mycroft turned to them, staring for a moment, before throwing out his hands and slowly, eventually, sitting down in the chair.

Now that he was playing along, Sherlock’s hands lowered as he looked at him. Mycroft gestured to Mrs. Hudson.

“She’s not going to stay there, is she?” he asked tiredly.

Sherlock looked at her, then cocked his head. Her choice.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked Mycroft. He sighed.

“Thank you.”

“The kettle’s over there,” she pointed to the kitchen, clearly dismissing him, and walked down the stairs.

Sherlock and John shared a smile as Mycroft bristled.

“So what happens now? Are you going to make _deductions?_ ” he sneered.

“You’re going to tell the truth, Mycroft, pure and simple,” Sherlock replied flatly. Well. The truth as far as the dream was concerned.

“Who was it said, ‘Truth is rarely pure, and never simple’?” Mycroft deflected. Sherlock turned to face him.

“I don’t know and I don’t _care_ ,” he said. “So there were three of us. I know that now.” Or so the script said. “You, me, and… _Eurus._ ” Mycroft nodded. “A sister I can’t _remember._ Interesting name, Eurus. It’s Greek, isn’t it?” he asked, mostly rhetorically.

“Mm, yeah,” John piped up, consulting his notebook. “Uh, literally, ‘the god of the East Wind.’”

“Yes,” Mycroft said.

“‘The East Wind is coming, Sherlock’...” he said quietly, looking at the floor, before glancing back to Mycroft. “You used that to scare me.” Which was the truth. Sherlock could remember first coming across the story as a child, young and impressionable, with far too active of an imagination for his own good. Mycroft had been more than willing to torment him relentlessly about it. As brothers do.

“No,” Mycroft said, however. That wasn’t how the dream wanted it to go.

“You turned my sister into a _ghost story_.”

“Of _course_ I didn’t. I monitored you,” Mycroft insisted, like that made a difference.

“You what?” John asked. Mycroft looked at him.

“Memories can resurface,” he said. “Wounds can re-open. The roads we walk have demons beneath... “ he looked back at Sherlock. “And yours have been waiting a very long time. I never _bullied_ you.”

Inwardly, Sherlock scoffed. Perhaps not when he was young, maybe, but only when he was _very_ young. Once it became clear how much slower than Mycroft Sherlock had been, how much _weaker_ (surface thoughts only, memories only with skin contact, essentially no broadcast empathy), everything changed.

“I used -- at discrete intervals -- potential trigger words to update myself as to your mental condition,” Mycroft continued. “I was looking after you.”

“Why can’t I remember her?” Sherlock whispered intensely.

Mycroft paused.

“This is a private matter,” he said, glancing at John out of the corner of his eye.

John started to get up, and Sherlock felt the pull of the dream, the pull to continue the story as scripted -- John would remove himself, eavesdropping from the kitchen as Sherlock and Mycroft hashed out the “truth” of Eurus -- but Sherlock refused to play along. He’d allow the dream to mess around all it wanted to with his personal history; it could give him seven secret sisters and a cannibalistic twin if it wanted to, but _this_ was where he drew the line. If this had been real, if this was actually happening to him, he knew how he would truly react.

“John stays,” he said firmly. Mycroft leaned forward in his chair.

“This is family,” he hissed.

“ _That’s why he stays!_ ” he shouted, glaring at Mycroft.

He could feel John’s surprised stare, even as John relaxed back into his chair, but Sherlock refused to look at him. It was revealing rather a lot, he knew, but he refused to let John believe himself to be anything less than one of the most important people in Sherlock’s life.

In all actuality he was truly _the_ most important person, but even Sherlock knew not to bring that up here. He'd only just gotten John back as a friend -- he wasn't about to jeopardize that with unwanted sentiment.

Mycroft -- the dream facsimile, really -- paused as the script went off-course, the psychic programming scrambling to come up with a new set of lines to get back on track.

If Sherlock concentrated, he could feel the story attempt to continue on its previous path, the path where he excluded John. He couldn’t access John’s actual mind, trapped as he was within the dream, but he _was_ able to alter the dreamscape itself. He could rearrange the inside of the jail cell -- he just couldn’t open the door yet.

He pressed forward with his mind, bending John’s dreamscape -- and thus the dream -- to his will. He’d done it before, three years ago, when he helped John build his own prototype mind palace; his “mind flat,” as he’d called it.

Of course, John had been conscious of his actions at the time, able to bend with him, and there hadn’t been a malicious curse of a dream in his head to provide resistance, either.

He _knew_ John’s mind though, knew the feel and give of it, how it worked and how it couldn’t. He felt at _home_ in his mind, even now, and though they’d never discussed it, never so much as hinted at it in all these years, he knew John had felt comfortable in his own head. Hopefully, he still did, even after everything.

Still. The two of their minds had been compatible with each other at one point in time. John had let him in today, completely subconsciously; he still fit perfectly in John’s mind, regardless of how John would feel in his. No psychic coma was strong enough to resist that.

He still had to be extremely careful, of course. This was was John’s _mind_ , the very root and heart of who he was. Sherlock wasn’t about to risk damaging a single neuron of it. Not to mention, the curse of a coma was obviously still very active; he had no idea how sensitive the calibration was, how quickly it would be alerted to deviations in the script and what it might do in retaliation. A minor change such as including John in the conversation _shouldn't_ be worthy enough to set off an alarm, but you never know. He had no idea who forced John into the coma, or how strictly they intended him to follow its programming.

Gently, gently, he stretched out a filament of thought, spiderweb-thin but strong. He wove into the edges of John’s mind, mimicking the thought patterns he'd long-ago memorized. He nudged at the dream, making it rewrite itself to include John in the discussion. Sherlock had learned his lesson about excluding him long ago -- he would find out what was going on _with_ John, no matter what.

“Of course,” Dream-Mycroft demurred, and with that the story was back on track. Sherlock relinquished his minor control once more as John cleared his throat.

“So there were three Holmes kids.” He opened his notebook. “What was the age gap?”

“Seven years between myself and Sherlock,” Mycroft said -- which was true. “One year between Sherlock and Eurus.”

“Ah. Middle child. Explains a lot,” John said, pointing his pen at Sherlock.

Sherlock shot him a look, completely genuine -- he was obviously the quintessential younger sibling, even _he_ realized this. Just as Mycroft was the quintessential overbearing, overprotective, controlling git of an elder sibling. Their particular flavor of sibling dynamics only really worked with two, surely even John understood that.

John sent him a look back -- thankfully his _‘Right, sorry, moving on’_ look -- and looked down to break his gaze before glancing back at Mycroft.

“So did she have it, too?”

“Have what?”

“The deduction thing.”

Mycroft scoffed.

“The ‘deduction thing’?” he mocked.

“... Yes.” John said, completely unphased.

Mycroft sighed softly, looking into the middle distance.

“... More than you can know.”

“Enlighten me,” John said after a moment.

“You realize I’m the smart one?” Mycroft said, gesturing between Sherlock and himself.

“As you never cease to announce,” Sherlock rolled his eyes. Mycroft ignored him.

“But Eurus… She was incandescent, even then. Our abilities were professionally assessed more than once. I was remarkable, but Eurus was described as an era-defining genius, beyond Newton.”

“Then _why don’t I remember her?_ ” Sherlock whispered intensely.

“You _do_ remember her, in a way,” Mycroft said. “Every choice you ever made, every path you’ve ever taken, the man you are today… is your memory of Eurus.”

Sherlock broke his gaze, and as he did Mycroft suddenly looked down at his own feet --

And abruptly, Mycroft was standing on a pebbled beach, Sherlock (and John) incorporeally watching, temporarily removed from the focus of the narrative. It was the very same pebbled beach that he’d visited many times as a child, just a short ways away from the cottage they’d all stay at in Sussex. He recognized the slope of the shore, the cluster of trees on the other side of the river, and it confirmed a suspicion of his. The dream was feeding off of his own memories, filling in the gaps in John’s knowledge with facts that fit its narrative.

Even as he thought this, a dog barked nearby, and his heart clenched.

An Irish setter splashed through the shallows of the river, a burgundy bandana tied around its neck.

_Redbeard._

Yes. It was definitely feeding off of his memories.

“She was different from the beginning,” Mycroft was saying.

A short distance away, a young girl, approximately six or so years old, stood on the shoreline, watching the dog romp around in the water. Her light brown hair was in messy pigtails, and she had a disconcertingly serious expression on her young face.

Sherlock had never seen her before in his life.

“She knew things she never should have known…”

Not far from the girl, an overweight boy with dark hair, roughly fourteen, was throwing rocks into the river, trying and failing to skip them. A teenage Mycroft, also plucked from Sherlock’s memories. Beyond them, slashing at the water with a plastic sword, pirate hat firmly shoved over his curls, was the third child. It was himself, of course, at age seven. The little girl, Eurus presumably, was solemnly watching his younger self play.

Mycroft (the adult Mycroft, that is) bent down and picked up a large pebble from the edge of the water. Suddenly, they were back in 221b.

“... As if she was somehow aware of truths beyond the normal scope.”

Inwardly, Sherlock frowned. Those were classic signs of a psychedivergent child, signs both he and Mycroft had exhibited as children, yet they were being portrayed as something unheard of, something vastly unsettling. It was uncommon, yes, but not _unheard_ of. Perhaps it was meant to heighten the fear and “otherness” of Eurus, to explain away why Sherlock had apparently deleted her, but John knew Sherlock and Mycroft were both psychic. As a medical doctor he’d had training in spotting these traits in children, especially now that he was working as a general practitioner. He wasn’t going to be unsettled at the idea of a child knowing more than she ought to.

Clearly, whoever had placed John in this coma didn’t know him at all.

Seated in his chair, Mycroft opened his hand, revealing the dripping stone. In a flash they were back at the beach, and little Eurus spun around, staring directly at Mycroft.

“You look funny grown up,” she said, emotionless.

Back in 221b, Mycroft shifted, staring into dead space, uncomfortable.

“What’s wrong?” John asked.

“Sorry,” Mycroft quietly said, looking down at his hand, which was suddenly dry and empty. The echo of a pebble splashing into invisible water resounded in the quiet air. He closed his hand. “The memories are disturbing.”

“What do you mean?” Sherlock said. “Examples.”

“They found her with a knife, once. She seemed to be cutting herself. Mother and Father were terrified. They thought it was a suicide attempt. But when I asked Eurus about what she was doing, she said…”

Suddenly, Eurus was standing in front of them, just before the fireplace.

“I wanted to see how my muscles worked,” she said in that quiet, too-calm voice.

“Jesus!” John interjected. Other than responding to her words, John didn’t react to her presence, continuing to look at Mycroft.

Sherlock had to hand it to the psychic; this entire story was very… dramatic. Almost cinematic. The secret sister, the heavy editing, the repressed trauma finally making its way to the surface… it was almost like a scene from a movie John would have forced him to watch.

“So I asked her if she felt pain,” Mycroft continued on, “and she said…”

“Which one’s pain?”

“What happened?” Sherlock asked.

Mycroft stood. Abruptly, they were standing in a field, all three of them, a short distance away from an old country house.

“Musgrave,” Mycroft said gravely. “The ancestral home, where there was always honey for tea.”

That much was true, as well. Musgrave was the name of their Sussex cottage, although they never spent a large amount of time there. It was always a vacation spot, somewhere they could spend a weekend or two when time permitted, but it was just too small to sustain a family of four for longer than that. Especially not a family of five.

Not too far from the house, there was a cluster of gravestones, with long grass and weeds growing between the stones. Little Sherlock, kitted out with his pirate hat and (at the time) favorite yellow jumper, leaned against one as he quietly read a book.

“... And Sherlock played among the funny gravestones,” Mycroft went on.

They flashed back to 221b.

“Funny how?” John asked.

Back to Musgrave. Their mother was calling from the house.

“Come on, you lot!”

Redbeard scampered past the three of them, closely followed by young Sherlock.

“They weren’t real,” Mycroft said. “The dates were all wrong.”

The dream brought their collective attention to a specific gravestone, onto which was carved:

_NEMO_

_HOLMES_

_1617 - 1822_

_Aged 32 Years_

“An architectural joke which fascinated Sherlock.”

That was true only in the barest of senses. Yes, strange names and impossible dates had always piqued his curiosity, and if Musgrave had indeed had a set of funny graves, there was no doubt it would have fascinated him as a child -- except no such graves existed at the real Musgrave.

Clearly, regardless of whatever he was supposed to think about these graves, they held some kind of deeper meaning to the dream. Likely, the impossible dates would translate to some kind of code or cipher. Sherlock scanned over what graves he could see, committing their names and dates to his memory.

They flashed into the kitchen of the house, invisibly watching over the Holmes family (plus Eurus) eating dinner. Eurus stared at young Sherlock as she sang, and he faintly frowned back at her.

“... who will find me, deep down below the old beech tree?”

Back at Baker Street, the dream opened his mouth and filled in the next lines for him as Eurus distantly sang on.

“Help succour me now…”

“The East winds blow,” Mycroft joined in.

“Sixteen by six…”

“... and under we go,” Mycroft finished, looking haunted. “You’re starting to remember,” he said after a moment.

“Fragments.”

Musgrave. Young Sherlock clambered down from the table and raced out of the room, Eurus watching him go.

“Redbeard!” he cried.

Young Mycroft turned and watched as he ran outside, clutching his sword, calling for his dog once more. He made his way up a steep set of stairs, racing past the three of them.

“Redbeard?” John asked.

“He was my dog,” Sherlock said.

Little Sherlock ran across the meadow. Focused on him as they were, Sherlock realized for the first time how similar his little old pirate hat was to his current coat -- dark blue, almost black in certain lights, a flash of red embroidery. He hadn’t thought about that hat in years, _decades_ , but somewhere in his subconscious he (obviously) must have still retained the memory of it. That was a bit embarrassing. With any luck, John would forget about that little detail once he woke up.

“Eurus took Redbeard and locked him up, somewhere no one could find him,” Mycroft said.

Little Sherlock continued to call for Redbeard, peppering Mycroft’s explanation with his young anguish as he ran into the woods, running out to the stream, hanging over the side of the bridge.

“... And she refused to say where he was. She’d only repeat that song -- her little ritual. We begged and begged her to tell us where he was. But she said…”

“ _The song is the answer,_ ” her disembodied voice whispered intensely.

“But the song made no sense,” Mycroft said.

The kitchen. Eurus, mocking, sarcastic, singing her song to little Sherlock.

“ _... brother, and under we go._ ”

Baker Street.

“What happened to Redbeard?” Sherlock asked.

In real life, Redbeard had lived for nineteen years, several years longer than a typical lifespan for an Irish setter. Sherlock had quite literally grown up with him, and when Redbeard had been diagnosed with late stage, very aggressive liver cancer when he was in his first year of uni, and subsequently died suddenly four weeks later before he’d had a chance to get home, Sherlock… had not taken it very well. At all. It had been the reason why Mycroft made him promise to always make his Lists.

“We never found him,” Mycroft said. “But she started calling him ‘Drowned Redbeard,’ so we made our assumptions.” He turned to John. “Sherlock was traumatized. Natural, I suppose -- he was, in the early days, an emotional child -- but after that, he was different. So changed. Never spoke of it again. In time, he seemed to forget that Eurus had ever even existed.”

“How could he forget? She was living in the same house,” John said.

Mycroft shook his head.

“No. They took her away.”

“Why? You don’t lock up a child because a dog goes missing.”

“Quite so. It was what happened immediately afterwards.”

They flashed into a child’s bedroom, disembodied once again. Eurus was sitting on the floor, sifting through several crayon drawings. In a wonderfully stereotypical fashion, they were all gruesome and morbid, their innocent, childish form making it even more disturbing. One was a drawing of her family, each of them labeled, with the one noted as “sherlock” violently crossed out. Another, a burst of scarlet blood poured from his slashed throat. Another, he was being hanged. A second family drawing, this time of them at the beach, with Sherlock surrounded by storm clouds and red Xs over his body. Drawing after drawing, almost every single one depicting Sherlock either dead or in some level of distress. Even as they watched, she continued drawing another such picture, this time of a frowning Sherlock looking out of a window of their home, trapped, as she crossed out the window. Their parents’ voices floated out from another nearby room as she drew.

“She knows where he is!” their mother cried.

“We can’t make her tell us,” their father said. “We can’t make her do _anything_.”

Eurus stopped drawing and looked up. When she looked back down, she was suddenly holding a matchbox, the words _“Maison de la Peur_ ” emblazoned on the front.

House of Fear. How wonderfully fitting.

She shook the box, striking a match and holding it up to her eye, seemingly mesmerized.

Suddenly outside, with only Mycroft corporeal, they watched as the house burned and crumbled. Flakes of ash fell like snow as he stared, visibly devastated, and finally closed his eyes.

Back in 221b, ash continued to quietly fall for a moment, fading away only as Mycroft opened his eyes once more.

“After that, our sister had to be taken away.”

“Where?” Sherlock asked.

“Oh, some suitable place -- or so everyone thought. Not suitable enough, however. She died there.”

“How?” John asked.

“She started another fire, one which she did not survive.”

“This is a lie,” Sherlock said, firmly.

Most of this entire dream was a lie. Practically all of it, really, when you accounted for how far the few truths present were bent.

Honestly, it wasn’t even a particularly believable lie. Even accounting for grief and reluctance to bring it up, and ignoring the plausibility of him _forgetting one of his own siblings_ , surely some sign of Eurus would have persisted. You can’t just erase a member of your family, as much as Sherlock would have loved to erase Mycroft over the years. Their parents were normal, sentimental, their father especially -- surely they would have brought up the subject of Eurus at some point. “ _Oh, Eurus would have been twelve today -- so tragic her life was cut so short._ ” Something like that. _Anything_. Even if psychologists had told them to never talk about her, for fear of shattering his oh-so-fragile mind, no one is infallible. Yes, he rarely spent time with his parents if he could help it, but over twenty-eight years, presumably one of them would have slipped up at some point and mentioned his having a sister. It just wasn’t _realistic._

Frankly, he was starting to get a bit angry on John’s behalf. The man was a _doctor_ , and thus pretty damn smart in his own right. If the dream coma wasn’t forcing him to believe this was real, he would have seen through it in a second. It was almost insulting.

However, there was nothing Sherlock could do to break him free of the curse. Yet.

“... Yes,” Mycroft said after a moment. “It is also a kindness. This is the story I told our parents to spare them further pain, and to account for the absence of an identifiable body.”

“And no doubt prevent their further interference.”

“Well, that too, of course. The depth of Eurus’s psychosis and the extent of her abilities couldn’t hope to be contained in any ordinary institution. Uncle Rudy took care of things.”

“Where is she, Mycroft?” he hissed. “ _Where’s our sister_?”

“There’s a place called Sherrinford -- an island. It’s a secure and very secretive installation whose sole purpose is to contain what we call ‘the uncontainables.’”

Sherlock froze.

That was a step too far.

He certainly didn’t have a secret sister named Eurus, who liked to run around drowning dogs and setting houses on fire or whatever else, but… it wasn’t _entirely_ truthful to say there’d only ever been two Holmes siblings.

Only two _living_ siblings, perhaps. But. There _had_ been a third.

Technically.

Sherrinford Carlton Donald Holmes had been born on March 31st, 1975. He’d weighed six pounds, three ounces.

He had been stillborn.

Sherlock obviously hadn’t been directly affected by it, not having been born until five years after the point, but it had deeply affected his mother. She hadn’t even wanted to try to have another child -- Sherlock knew he had very much been an “accident” baby. He was lucky to have even been born, to be honest. Mummy had been forty-one at the time of his birth -- there were many children born to much younger mothers that had any number of developmental problems. It was a miracle he’d been born as healthy as he was.

He might not have understood why Jennifer Wilson would have been still affected by her stillborn daughter fourteen years later back in the Study in Pink case, but it was different when the stillborn child could have been your own brother. Although, in all honesty, he still hadn’t truly understood how something like that could affect you years later until relatively recently -- he had John to thank for that, and Rosie even more so. John was helpful in that way; he helped put things into context for Sherlock, even if he didn’t realize he was doing so.

Even without that context, however, even Sherlock could have realized it was a bit poor taste to name a security facility after a stillborn baby.

However, he wasn’t entirely sure the facility was merely a fabrication of the dream coma. In all honesty, it didn’t sound too far-fetched for Mycroft to have done something similar, if not quite to the same extent. Of the two of them, he’d always had more issues than Sherlock when it came to empathy (of the psychetypical kind, that is) and the like, and that was saying something. It even could have been Mycroft’s strange way of honoring Sherrinford, if Sherlock thought he cared at all about that sort of thing.

It was just one more item to bring up after this whole ordeal was over with. With any luck, he might even be able get a reasonably straight answer out of Mycroft.

“The demons beneath the road -- this is where we trap them,” he was saying.

Like it was a projection screen, the wall behind Mycroft suddenly showed an image of the facility and its surrounding island -- dark, windswept, and dramatically foreboding. Guards armed to the teeth patrolled its walls, and the building itself extended far into the ground.

“Sherrinford is more than a prison or an asylum; it is a fortress built to keep the rest of the world safe from what is inside it. Heaven may be a fantasy for the credulous and the afraid, but I can give you a map reference for Hell.”

He took a fortifying breath.

“That’s where our sister has been since early childhood. She hasn’t left -- not for a single day. Whoever you both met, it _can’t_ have been her.”

Suddenly, a loud crash and a thud sounded from the kitchen, like something had been tossed through the window. They all scrambled up to look as a woman’s pre-recorded voice began to sing, soft and tinny.

“ _I that am lost, oh, who will find me, deep down below the old beech tree?_ ”

A small drone rose up from the floor, revealing the source of both the crash and the continued singing. An oblong, futuristic-looking device was perched on its back.

“ _Help succour me now, the East Wind’s blowing. Sixteen by six, brother, and under we go…_ ”

“Keep back!” Mycroft said urgently, as the drone rose higher and started to make its way into the living room. “Keep as still as you can!”

“What is it?” John asked, backing away slowly as Mycroft edged toward the door.

“It’s a drone,” Sherlock said.

“Yeah, I can see that,” he shot back. “What’s it carrying?”

“What’s that silver thing on top of it, Mycroft?” Sherlock asked, and inwardly he rolled his eyes. God, he abhorred redundancy.

“It’s a DX-707. I’ve authorized the purchase of quite a number of these,” he said, as the drone came to a halt in the middle of the room and slowly dropped to the floor. “Colloquially, it is known as ‘the patience grenade.’”

“Patience?” John asked.

The grenade buzzed, releasing some sort of mechanism in the top, and began to quietly beep.

“The motion sensor has activated,” Mycroft said quietly. “If any of us move, the grenade will detonate.”

“How powerful?” Sherlock asked.

“It will certainly destroy this flat and kill anyone in it. Assuming walls of reasonable strength, your neighbors should be safe, but as it’s landed on the floor, I am moved to wonder if the cafe below is open.”

“It’s Sunday morning, so it’s closed.”

“What about Mrs. Hudson?” John asked.

Their attention was brought to the floor below, where, in accordance to previously established habits, Mrs. Hudson was vacuuming the lino while listening to very loud rock music through her earbuds, dancing away and completely unaware a potentially devastating bomb was primed and sitting approximately two and a half meters above her head.

“Going by her usual routine, I estimate she has another two minutes left,” Sherlock said.

“She keeps her vacuum cleaner at the back of the flat,” John said.

“So?” Mycroft asked.

“So, safer there when she’s putting it away?”

Idiotically, Mycroft turned to look at him. Of course, however, the grenade didn’t go off. The story wasn’t ready for it to happen yet.

“Look, we have to move eventually,” John continued. “We should do it when she’s safest.”

“When the vacuum stops,” Sherlock said, “we give her eight seconds to get to the back of the flat. She’s fast when she’s cleaning. Then we move.” He glanced at Mycroft. “What’s the trigger response time?”

Mycroft just stared at him. Sherlock stifled a sigh. He didn’t even have the excuse of Sherlock messing with the script, this time.

“Once we’re mobile, how long before detonation?” Sherlock simplified.

“We have a maximum of three seconds to vacate the blast radius.”

John closed his eyes, wilting slightly. Sherlock wasn’t worried, although he had the benefit of knowing this was only a dream and that they couldn’t actually get hurt.

“John and I will take the windows,” he said to Mycroft. “You take the stairs. Help Mrs. Hudson get out, too.”

“Me?”

“You’re closer.”

“You’re faster.”

“Speed differential won’t be as critical as distance.”

“Yes, agreed,” Mycroft said, grudgingly.

John glanced down to the floor, tracking the sound of the vacuum cleaner.

“She’s further away. She’s moving to the back,” he said.

“I estimate we have a minute left,” Sherlock said. “Is a phone call possible?”

“Phone call?” Mycroft asked.

“John has a daughter,” he said, and glanced at John out of the corner of his eye. “He may wish to say goodbye.”

His heart clenched a bit. _He_ might know that this was nothing more than a psychic-induced unconscious hallucination of John’s, but John didn’t. To him, it might very well be the last chance he’d get to talk to his daughter, as useless as it was to attempt to say goodbye to a four-month-old.

“I’m sorry, Doctor Watson. Any movement will set off the grenade,” Mycroft said, surprisingly gently. “I hope you understand.”

“Oscar Wilde.”

Mycroft blinked at the non-sequitur.

“What?”

“ _He_ said, ‘The truth is rarely pure, and never simple.’ It’s from ‘The Importance of Being Earnest,” John said. “We did it in school.”

Mycroft nodded slightly.

“So did we,” he said, and they had. “Now I recall. I was Lady Bracknell.”

“Yeah. You were great,” Sherlock said.

“You really think so?”

“Yes, I really do,” he said, truthfully.

“Well, that’s good to know. I’ve always wondered.”

Downstairs, the vacuum cleaner shut down, and Sherlock counted off the seconds it would take for Mrs. Hudson to bundle up the cord and start to haul the vacuum to the back of the flat. He glanced around at Mycroft and John.

“Good luck, boys,” he murmured, before bracing himself. “Three, two, one, go!”

As one, the three of them turned and raced toward their respective exits, Sherlock vaulting onto and over his chair. In a moment worthy of cinema, he and John crashed through the glass in perfect sync, 221b exploding behind them. The broken windows bellowed out smoke and flame, a massive fireball following in their wake. They plummeted toward the ground…

… and then everything went black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ALRIGHT SO health stuff. back in september my mom was diagnosed with multiple myeloma which is a type of blood cancer. luckily the doctors were able to catch it extremely early (by pure chance tbh) and so she has a very excellent chance of beating it, esp since she's a lot younger and relatively healthier than most of the ppl who get it (usually ppl who are diagnosed are like. 70s or 80s and she's only 57). there's no cure currently but it's one of the most treatable and least aggressive of cancers out there -- no one ever wants to get cancer obvi but of all the cancers to get it's one of the better ones to have :V
> 
> her treatment plan includes killing off her immune system and giving her a stem cell transplant -- actually, at the time of writing this, she was already supposed to have been admitted today to start the procedure but it was pushed back a week :V regardless, it involves her staying in chicago at the hospital or nearby for the duration (about a month), and I'll be staying with her bc she needs someone to be there 24/7. theoretically this shouldn't impact my ability to write too much (esp as the next chapters are based around the actual events of tfp) but once again. who knows tbh :V
> 
> here's hoping the next update doesn't take another eight months lma o


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